


Time Loop

by Fordtato



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen, Hypothermia, Mullet Stan Pines, New Years, Stan O' War II, Suicidal Thoughts, Time Travel, post-portal ford
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-15 01:01:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18063560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fordtato/pseuds/Fordtato
Summary: As Stan lay dying in the snow, a voice that sounded way too much like some unnamed poindexter he used to know told him from the back of his head: "Good riddance."But as he drifted off, he could have sworn he heard the voice again, louder, from the mouth of the alleyway.“Stan? Stanley!...I... I found you.”





	Time Loop

He just had to get run out of California, huh? Right as the new year was creeping in? Couldn’t have lasted long enough to stay hunkered down with the palm trees through the winter before the cops were called on him? Honestly, it served him right — Stan had gotten complacent with the 50 degree December nights, and he knew better than that; trouble followed close behind complacency like a sad puppy.

 _Come to think of it, trouble just follows_ me _around, doesn’t it?_

The cops had come over reports of a vagrant _loitering_ of all things, forget the black tar he was selling from his trunk just that morning. No, LAPD’s fucking finest got him for taking a nap in a doorway. Well ex-fucking-cuse him for getting sleepy after a long day of selling heroin, officers, won’t do it again. Was this what his tax dollars were going to? Well, not his, but the poor rubes who actually paid them?

And then the cops _had_ to run his plates, and then they _had_ to find the name Stetson Pinesfield and a rap sheet the length of a football field, and then as far as Stan was concerned, they had to get kicked in the shin and headbutted as quick as he could move in his groggy state before sprinting to his car.

The Stanleymobile. His baby. Riddled with bullets and windshield shattered. It felt like a stab in the heart, that. But she got him out of that mess, away from the cops, and she made it to Reno, despite the snow blasting through the gap where the glass once stood. And Stan was able to get her to Frankie, who _probably_ wouldn’t be too mad when Stanley picked the car up from her shop with an IOU and no cash (but who was he kidding, it’s only a matter of time before Nevada was out of the question and Stan fucked this up too, huh, so it’s not like he’d have to see her again.)

So here he was, walking Virginia St. in downtown Reno on New Years Eve, in a coat too thin to break the wind and too soaked with the sopping snow to do anything but leech off what little warmth he had, but the streets would have to do until his car was ready to make it to Wisconsin, or Oklahoma, or wherever the fuck he was heading to next. Why the fuck did he had to get banned from every state with a mild winter?

He eyed a thin little alley between two storefronts coming up and wondered if it was worth it - in this snow, it would either serve as a shelter to break the wind frosting over his mullet, or it would suddenly serve as a tunnel for all the wind and just freeze him faster.

The sight of flashing lights a block away made his decision for him.

“Fuck it.”

The alley wasn’t too bad, he decided, smell of cat-piss aside. And if he didn’t think about it, and used lots of fucking imagination, it was actually kinda cozy. “Might move here full time,” he muttered under his breath as he hunkered down in the snow next to the dumpster and a frozen puddle of, yup, that’s where the cat-piss smell is coming from.

“It’s not that bad, Stan,” he said to himself, breathing into his icy hands before shoving them against his armpits. “Sure, it might be a new rock bottom, but remember when you thought you’d  hit rock bottom last month? Pretty soon there will be a _new_ rock bottom and this situation will be fucking swell in comparison. Silver fucking linings.”

He felt his eyelids grow heavy, and despite a voice of reason that sounded way too much like some unnamed poindexter he used to know prattling on in the recess of his memory about hypothermia and about the body conserving energy and _really, Stanley, you should pay attention, the test is tomorrow —_

And he did know, didn’t he, that falling asleep in the snow was _not_ a good idea, right? That this was dangerous? That he could die?

“Oh no,” he said out loud with a mirthless chuckle that lingered between him, the dumpster and the cat piss. “That would be _awful_.” He snorted and leaned back against the wall.

In his head, that nerdy voice said _Good riddance._

But as he drifted off, he could have sworn he heard the voice again, louder, from the mouth of the alleyway.

“Stan? Stanley!...I... I found you.”

\----------

When Stanley woke up, he felt the warmth of a heated blanket, the unfamiliar comfort of a mattress beneath him, and a bitter disappointment in the pit of his stomach.

But before he could unravel that emotional mess (Ha! Who was he kidding? He wasn’t gonna think about his suicidal ideation - not today, Satan) the disappointment was aptly replaced with raw panic and he shot up to a sitting position. “Where the fuck am I? Who -”

It was the hand on his shoulder that really set him off, and he reached for the pocketknife stuffed in the side of his shoe, and _holy fuck wait where are my shoes - where’s my knife - where am I?_

The hand on his shoulder didn’t let up. “Easy, Stanley, easy - fuck, you shouldn’t be awake. Just - calm down and —”

“Who the fuck do you think you are, you—” Stan rolled out of the grip and out of bed, turning to his attacker before freezing in his tracks. “... _Ford?_ ”

Stanford Pines was in the room - a moderately nice hotel room, certainly nicer than anyplace Stanley could afford - hands awkwardly held in front of him, thumbs twiddling, looking like he was going through an entire cocktail of emotions strong enough to knock him off his ass— Stan almost had to laugh at the expression teetering between frustration, panic and _that can’t be relief, can it_?

And if Ford was feeling a cocktail, Stan was going through the same, Molotov edition.

This was Ford, the fucking jerk. There was no mistaking it. The voice, the hair, the way the hands were held just hidden enough to hide the sixth finger at a glance — that was all Poindexter.

But those hands, and Ford’s face, were lined with years (decades, even) and his hair was salt-and-peppering and his eyes were steelier than they ever had been, even more so than the last time Stan had seen him from the upstairs window of Pines Pawns - what, 7 years ago?

“Ford? You...you’re… here? You’re old? You’re _here_?”

“Stan - I - dammit, you weren’t supposed to wake up, Tesla knows what this will change- unless —”

“Tesla knows? Jesus you’re a dork.”

“Stan, this is serious, you —”

“I wake up in a hotel room God knows where, and you’re old as shit and —”

“Oh please, Stan, it’s not like I’m decrepit. You should see yourse— you know what, nevermind.”

“It’s been years, Ford. But not _that_ many years. I mean, the hell is this? A hallucination? A dream?”

Ford’s eyebrows furrow for a moment before his face lights up. “A dre- Yes! Yes! It’s just a dream, Stanley! You’re still in the snow! That would explain everything, right? I mean, well - yes. This is just a dream.”

“You don’t need to sound so happy about it, buddy.” Stan leaned back into the bed and deflated against the covers, staring at his feet, now covered in knitted socks with - was that a pattern of atoms and _microscopes_?

“Are these new socks?” Stan asked, bewildered.

Stan felt the bed dip where Ford sat down next to him, still twiddling his thumbs. “Um… I, well, in this _dream_ , of course… your shoes were soaked. So I put them by the door. And your socks had holes. So um… Well, you had to heat up.”

“I’m dreaming that my estranged brother bought me socks?”

“I just gave my pair.”

“That would explain the nerdiness. So I’m dreaming my estranged brother gave me his socks. And that he’s old... And that I’m in a hotel… where is this hotel, anyways?”

“Oh, it’s just an inn, outskirts of Reno.”

“I _would_ just dream up a hotel in the same shitty town I’m dying in. I couldn’t dream up Vegas? Or Honolulu?”

Ford said nothing back, just kept fidgeting in the corner of Stan’s eye. Stan leaned his head back to groan at the ceiling. “You know… this _would_ be a dream. It’s not like you’d ever talk to me otherwise.”

The thumb-twiddling in Stan’s periphery stopped and Stan heard a sharp intake of breath beside him. “I don’t- you know I….” Ford sighed and Stan felt the weight lift from the bed as his brother walked toward the window to watch the snow drifting down outside. “You should… go back to sleep, Stan.”

“I _am_ asleep, though.” Still, Stan couldn’t help but feel the heaviness of his eyelids - God, when was the last time he had slept on a mattress, or even slept at all? Months for the former and two days for the latter.

“It’s gonna be okay, Stan. Just… just rest.”

If this was a dream, and he was really still outside, he didn’t really have a chance, did he? “Am I going to wake up?” Stan asked, peering through sleepy eyes at Ford’s silhouette in the window. Ford was fiddling with something from his pocket, what was that? A cubik’s cube? The fucking nerd. Wait, no? A tape measure?

“Yeah, Stan. You’re going to wake up. The storm will be over soon.” Ford’s voice was rough, but not just with years. That damn cocktail.

Just as sleep dragged him down to inky depths, Stan managed a snort. “Shame, really. I would have liked to stay.”

\-------

When Stan was awake, the smell of cat piss hit him full-on, and while he felt relatively dry for spending a night in the blizzard, he couldn’t deny the chill in the air. He lifted his head and looked around him in a hurry -  no cops, no passerby? No one was around. Everyone was probably at home hung over from the New Year celebrations. Honestly he was pretty surprised the sound of fireworks hadn’t woken him up, having spent the night outside.

As he climbed to his feet, checking for his empty wallet and pocketknife, both safe and sound for all the good they’d do him, he noticed something peeking out from under the dumpster.

It was three crisp 100 dollar bills. He must have missed it in the dark last night when he had found the alley. Talk about luck!

He shuddered as he thought about the dream. It had felt so real… and Ford…

Stan shook his head and marched out of the alley.

 _Ford wouldn’t know_ or _care if you had died there last night. Don’t… it’s not worth thinking about._

He was feeling well rested as he marched toward Frankie’s shop. Maybe he’d be able to pay her after all. Well, on second thought, he’d probably keep it.

 _We’ll see_ , he thought to himself, stepping into the street, and overlooking the second pair of footprints he stepped over. _We’ll see._

____

When Ford popped up back on the Stan O’ War II, Stan nearly jumped out of his chair.

“You’re back already? Well… how was it?”

“You made it through the night. Hopefully you were spared a bad case of frostbite or hypothermia.”

“Good… I really appreciate it, Ford. I know you were worried about the space-time-continuum or some shit, but —”

“And rightfully so! If you had seen me, and realized I had travelled in time, who knows what that could have changed? You even woke up at some point! Hopefully no wormholes pop up…”

Ford looked out past the railing onto the clear ocean. It was frigid cold, but there wasn’t a cloud in sight, and the stars above the arctic circle lit up above them like snowflakes.

“Hey, Stan?” He leaned onto the railing, not taking his eyes off the sky.

“Yeah, Ford?” said Stan, joining him.

“Why _that_ day? I mean, you could have sent me back to fix anything. You mentioned being locked in a car trunk in New Mexico once. Why not send me to fix that? Why did it have to be _that_ New Year’s Eve?”

Stan smiled pensively before pulling something from his pocket and tossing it over to Ford. The look of incredulousness on Ford’s face was almost enough to make him laugh off the deck.

“You left your socks in the 70s, genius.”

Ford stared at the pair of socks in his hand, weathered over 35 years and much thinner, but unmistakably the pair he had received from Mabel on Christmas, just a week ago.

“You- you knew?”

“That it was you? Way back then? Pffft, well in ‘77, when I realized that I was wearing the socks and that it wasn’t all a dream, I figured some Good Samaritan had picked me up and my delirious-ass self just _thought_ they were you. It would explain everything. Figured they got sick of me and just dumped me back before leaving behind a few hundred bucks. Thanks for that by the way. I owe you one.”

“We both know you won’t pay me back.” Ford said, rolling his eyes.

“You’re not wrong,” Stan said, with a click of his tongue and a flash of a finger gun. “Anyways, when I saw you open Mabel’s Christmas gift, and saw the socks, it all came back to me — who’da thunk I’d still be recovering memories this far from the apocalypse — and I put-two-and-two together. And when that bozo with the time tape showed up, it was all pretty clear. Figured it was something that had to happen - didn’t want a - what did you call it? A paradot?”

“A paradox.”

“Yeah, that.”

Ford shook his head and put the socks in his pocket. “Mabel will be happy to hear she was able to help you out, even that far in the past. The power of Mabel knows no bounds.”

“Yeah, she’s a powerhouse, that little gremlin.”

Ford’s watch struck midnight and beeped a couple times but neither of them moved to grab the champagne they’d bought for the occasion. Instead, they stayed out on the deck, looking up at the stars glittering above them like a thousand fireworks.

“Happy New Year, Stan.”

“Happy New Year, Ford.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys, remember when I wrote fanfiction? Good times. I wrote this around New Year's as a Secret Santa gift, but I never published it because, fun fact, I have anxiety and wasn't sure if anyone would like it. 
> 
> That being said, I've been getting a lot of messages about whether or not Jersey Boy is continuing — IT IS. I am still working on it. This next chapter is shaping up to be pretty long.
> 
> At this point I've put it off for so long due to (among other things) being busy planning my own wedding — I"M MARRIED NOW ISN'T THAT FUCKING NUTS? — and I really hope it doesn't disappoint. You guys have been so patient, really, and I appreciate that more than anything. So I just want Ch. 8 to be perfect. 
> 
> Regardless, I hope you enjoyed this fun little fic. Stay great, y'all. (Hopefully) the next thing I post will be Ch. 8 of Jersey Boy.


End file.
